


This Year She Devours

by Disguise of Carnivorism (Disguise_of_Carnivorism)



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Jareth is just generally frustrated with everything, Sarah Williams is not what she seems, Toby Williams is a bit of a turd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disguise_of_Carnivorism/pseuds/Disguise%20of%20Carnivorism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Labyrinth took Sarah Williams. Toby Williams wants her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is incredibly old... But we found it, liked the last parts, and patched it up.

The autumn sunlight seemed colder than usual, or so Toby thought as he walked briskly down the street. His breath created a constant steam in front of his lips, and he desperately wished he had brought gloves with him. Finally he found it, the nearly abandoned bookshop with peeling paint and dusty books. He checked the store name on the faded pieces of paper in his hand (worn from the hours it had spent in his pocket and the hours he had stared at the faded print in his dorm room), and then walked inside, dimly noting the small bell that rung at his entrance.

There was only one bookstore in all of Boston that had the book, only one dusting, aging bookstore that had not sold off (or thrown out) a copy of the book he sought. His own parents had thrown out his sister's copy (too many bad ideas, they said); it had taken him years to finally remember the author of the novel. Sarah's copy had never had an author's name: with its faded red cover and aging print it had seemed to have fallen out of a story itself, free of any ties to reality.

It was an old book, long out of print and very unpopular. He wondered where she had found it, where she had managed to pick up such an unwanted book, and why she had decided to keep it. He wondered how she had recognized its power between the faded print, how she had managed to tell the truth from fiction. He found himself at the cashier, ringing a bell to wake the man the clerk who had managed to doze off with the lack of customers.

"Hello Sir, my name is Toby Williams and I'm here to pick up a book I placed on reserve a few days ago." One copy, there had only been one copy, but it was more than any modern store in Boston—they had never heard of the book or its obscure author, and had pointed him instead to a collection of Grimms Fairy Tales and various collections of stories by Hans Christian Anderson.

"Oh, yes, you wanted  _Labyrinth_ , correct?" The shopkeeper jolted awake, readjusting his glasses and pulling a faded green book out of his desk drawer. It was obviously old and eaten away with neglect and disuse, "No one's wanted this book for a long time. Out of print for decades." He sniffed and sneezed from the dust, wiping off the cover with a tissue.

That book—that was the book. He had finally found it. After all the months of searching, he had finally found it: the window into his sister's disappearance. The one that didn't point at run-away, that didn't point at spoiled or selfish teenager—but hinted instead at the truth.

He remembered only glimpses of the Labyrinth. For years he hadn't understood them, the nightmares that crept into his daydreams. The blonde immortal had haunted him, riding crop in hand. Toby slumped in his chair with a thoughtful frown on his face; Toby's mind caught glimpses of the words he had spoken. There was obsession in his eyes as he had looked at the crystal ball in his hand, searching for the girl who came ever closer to the Labyrinth's center.

The images wouldn't leave. And there was a drive in him, deep and dark, to learn the inner workings of Sarah's story, to draw her out and save her from those cold eyes.

Toby shuddered.

Toby quickly composed himself and laid out the money on the table, picking the book up with relish. He resisted the urge to smell the dust that so lovingly covered the novel (as if the book were waiting for him to find it). "Thank you, Sir. If I ever need a book again, I'll be sure to come here."

_—_

The book was horrid. Not just the writing style and the plot development—the entire book was trash. But he didn't dare put it down because he could practically see her in every page, her green eyes watching him from behind the print, waiting for him to do something. And so he read each page for her sake, because given his own wishes he would never have touched it.

A childish romance in which the determined princess of a European kingdom (England or Germany, he guessed) decided to save her brother from the nasty Goblin King. The Goblin King himself was completely and utterly one dimensional; there was nothing of value within the book at all. Nothing except the fact that it had been Sarah's life, and that she had recognized some fairytale power within the character's cliché statements. (You have no power over me; I move the stars for no one; on and on with drivel.) It was one of the worst stories he had ever experienced the horror of reading.

Her life was based around this book. She had fashioned her dreams and her words around the play he held in his scholarly hands, and he couldn't figure out why it was so damn important. He had analyzed every passage for some deeper meaning and yet he had found nothing of significance, nothing that hinted the book might have been real enough to send both him and her to the realm of the Goblin King.

It was the ending, though, the ending that gave him pause. The King let her go. Omnipotent to the point of divinity, the King did nothing as he watched her leave. Toby wanted to tear the book in half. That is not what had happened.

It was as if he were looking through a glass window covered in fog; he looked out onto the world of the Labyrinth in which he could see nothing but hedges and aging walls. The print showed him but glimpses of what he had already known. The monologues provided him with a mere glimpse at their king, The Goblin King, master of time and death, thief of child-brides.

They hardly gave a description of the man, as if it were not necessary to describe the Goblin King. He simply was the Goblin King, and if one didn't know what that looked like, well, then they weren't looking hard enough. There was no sexual tension between the characters, no hint of the obsession in the man's eyes, no sense of being watched within those flimsy walls of words. The Goblin King simply was. He was like the Labyrinth, and had no need to be described. It was as if the reader should have already known what the world looked like, and repeating a description would just be redundant. No, what irritated him about the play was not the fact that it was idiotic; it was the fact that it thought  _he_ was idiotic.

Jareth—what kind of a name was that? Two syllables, hardly the name of a pseudo god who manipulated time with far too much ease. What kind of a God did nothing when a woman tore apart his kingdom? What kind of a King would have stolen her brother simply because she asked him? Toby was pacing, attempting to dissect the man's motives. Everyone had motives; all he needed was a chance to see them in the right light.

Sarah had managed to see the world through a tiny, fogged window; she had seen his face and she had seen his obsession. Why couldn't Toby do the same?

_—_

The smell of coffee overpowered Toby; the kitchen staff shouted as one latte was poured after another. It was somehow relaxing and took his mind off of the play. The bitter taste filled him and he felt himself find the inner peace he had been missing from the weeks spent studying the Goblin King's tale. He smiled and chuckled to himself. Who would have thought he would find the book only to wish he had never laid eyes on it?

"Your first time reading it." A low voice caused Toby to open his eyes. It belonged to a man in his late thirties (or so Toby guessed—it was difficult to tell) with disheveled blonde hair and bright blue eyes. The eyes made Toby blink; they looked wrong, out of place, forged. The man smiled a grin that made Toby think of a hunter. It was not a kind smile. "You poor boy. You must be so frustrated."

"Yes, it's, not a very good book…" His vision fogged as he continued to watch the stranger drink his coffee even as he grinned like the wolf. The violence in that image—why did it feel so familiar?

"You're just taking if for granted," the stranger said.

Toby's eyes narrowed at that statement, wondering if English was the man's first language (because nobody with English as a native tongue would have used that phrase in this context).

"You're reading for the words, boy. The book isn't speaking to those looking for  _words_. It speaks in the silence between thought and word. You only see what the book wants to show you."

His eyes, those false eyes, never left Toby, taking in every thought that passed through Toby's mind before it had even been wrought into existence. He was still smiling.

"Taking it for granted, a book is supposed to welcome its reader to invite it into its world like an old companion returned from a long, difficult journey." Toby felt his face grow red, his pride affronted by this stranger whose name had yet to be mentioned. Toby had always been considered a gifted English student, finding the symbolism and meaning behind words just as easily as another tied their shoes. To be denied by a childish play was frankly insulting, and now a disheveled stranger sought to add injury to insult (or vice versa) by pointing out this fact with relish.

"Assuming, of course, the book is a whore, so deprived of money she takes every desperate man who can pay the bill.  _Labyrinth_ is no prostitute; she will fight you, and she will devour you if you don't tread carefully among her pages. She hates you as she hates all men who flip through her covers with a lazy arrogance, just as you have.  _Labyrinth_ is a far more dangerous soul than you give her credit for. I'd watch my step if I were you, boy."

Toby couldn't find any words that were insulting enough for the man, that would bring him down to the level he deserved. Bastard just wasn't quite good enough. Toby remained silent with his lips clamped shut. The man raised an eyebrow before sighing and shrugging his coat back in place.

"You've grown. Almost have your first beard. A few more years and I suppose you'll have a suitable paycheck for a human lover. In the mean time, try not to disturb what is  _mine_."

And he was gone. A slight haze in the air, a blurred sense of movement, and he was no longer sitting across from Toby. He was nowhere. Toby felt himself shake. His coffee spilled on his hands as his eyes widened, and his mind jumped to insensible conclusions. Yes, bastard wasn't the word. The word was Jareth.

_—_

It was impossible to summon the Goblin King unless he wanted to come, which more often than not was when Toby didn't expect him and didn't want him. Toby discovered that early. No amount of cursing, pleading, chanting, praying would conjure the man. The Goblin King set his own terms, and he was making sure Toby realized it.

The book was no better than before; it was still dreadful and horrific and he wanted to burn it. But he couldn't. His pride had been challenged, and he had a lead. The Goblin King himself had tried to deter him; it wouldn't work, now, that Toby knew. He was close—he was close to finding her, his long lost sister.

It was with that thought that the Goblin King finally showed his face. Arms crossed, he stared down at Toby in what might assume to be amusement.

"Goblin King," Toby said.

"You take far too much after your sister." And there was a look in his eyes then, an ephemeral softness, and then the arrogance returned. "You summon me from my world, selfishly demand I grant you a wish, and then ask me to take it back five seconds later. Don't trifle with me. I'm not in the mood."

"So then you admit it; you do have my sister."

The Goblin King said nothing merely stood, the shadows in the room growing longer, as Toby continued to speak.

"For over twenty years you have kept my sister from the world she was born in, the world she belongs to. I want her back." For twenty years he had had to endure his parent's disapproving gazes, thinking his sister to be an actress or a bimbo who ran off. The police had never looked too hard for poor Sarah; she had simply vanished like smoke, and no one had thought anything of it.

"Yes, I thought so." The words were no more than a whisper, a sigh, and then he spoke directly to Toby. "What makes you think she belongs to this world, and not to mine? What makes you think she belongs to you?"

"She is my sister. I have more claim to her than you do."

"Why do you want her? What makes you feel the need to play hero now, twenty years after the fact? She was a selfish, spoiled child who wished you away for convenience. She abandoned you to the cruelties of your own world. Why would you want someone like that back into your life?"

"Why would you want her, Goblin King?"

He only smiled in response, and Toby shuddered.

"I challenge your Labyrinth for the sister you stole from me." It was pride which ruled his next words. "And I'll win because I know how this thing works. The Labyrinth is made of the challenger's dreams. My dreams, to be precise, my subconscious map of the world. Something you have no power over. I know my dreams as well as I know my place in this world—and you can't lose me in my own Labyrinth. That is why I'm going to win, and you have no choice but to sit back and watch."

Revenge for being the helpless child stuck at home, staring at pictures of a girl who no longer existed; revenge for all those years of wondering, of searching, of being a useless gifted child. And it was then that he noticed the glint of amusement in the Goblin King's eyes, and cursed himself.

"But then, that's no fun, is it? If you know all my tricks, all the cards I have hidden up my sleeves? And what good is life if it isn't fun?"

Toby's world disappeared in a breath, as if the king had blown out the final candle. The room smelled of smoke.


	2. Chapter 2

There were a handful of stars that seemed to dangle from the heavens, wavering in the non-existent wind. He could barely make them out against the haze of darkness, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to his shadowy surroundings. Toby found himself seated in a boat, facing a small child. The boat seemed sturdy enough, more real than the fragile stars. Yet, the designs in the wood seemed to twist and turn under his gaze, changing themselves on a mere whim like they were a trick of the dim light.

A child stood on the dark water, her face pale beneath a mop of wild dark hair. She glowed, and her ragged white dress made her look like a fallen star. Toby felt himself clinging to the sides of the boat; splinters dug into his hands.

"Hi!" Her voice seemed obnoxiously cheerful against her somber surroundings, matching the brightness she shone. Her reflection shed light, blinding his eyes. She appeared as a neglected rag doll, burning with a brilliance unparalleled in her darkened world. "I've never seen you before, what's your name?" Her smile was vicious, the smile of a predatory animal about to strike; there was no tenderness in the pale rag doll or her cruel green eyes.

"Toby Williams…" he said softly, afraid of the sound his voice made, of how it seemed to spread throughout the darkness like a beacon of light. He was afraid of who might have been listening, unseen beneath the glassy surface.

"That's a dumb name. Can you do me a favor, Mr. Toby?" The girl leaned in on the boat, her hands pulling her body up and forward as she peered at his face. She pointed to the heavens, toward the stars which dangled precariously, so close to falling.

"That northern star's going to fall any minute now, and I want to have it, but I don't think I'm tall enough. Can you catch it for me?" That ragged smile—it seemed so similar to the Goblin King's, a fey grin that stretched from one ear to the other. She was not pleading but she was not asking, either; in her mind's emerald eye he would catch that star and he would bring it to her. There was no alternative.

"I'm sorry, but, I have to solve the Labyrinth. I'm looking for someone very important to me and I don't have time to…" He trailed off, his eyes widening as he caught sight of her smile still in place. In a flurry of ragged movement she skittered into the boat. Standing above him, her green eyes mocked his human audacity.

"You are going to catch that star for me, Toby." No longer the voice of a delighted child, her words were absolute. She gave no excuses, no reasons; she only dealt out the orders and expected him to obey without question. "You are going to catch the northern star for me, Toby."

"I only have thirteen hours to solve the Labyrinth! I don't have time for you!" The shout reverberated through the silence, echoing off the lake's glass-like surface. The child frowned; her brows furrowed. Her brilliance dimmed and the shadows began to climb into his sanctuary, reaching out to claim him.

"You really are stupid, aren't you? Time isn't real; only babies believe in time." Whether the statement was meant to truly be an insult or just an observation, he couldn't tell. Her eyes were far too inhuman to display pride.

"That's like saying reality isn't real, or space isn't real—that's like saying you aren't real. You're the idiot here," Toby replied. The child said nothing, her toes scrunching into her bare feet, a puzzled frown on her face. She crouched. Toby didn't understand how this could be the inside of his head, or how this strange endless lake was supposed to be a labyrinth. And now he argued with a child.

"Who told you any of that was real?" she asked suddenly, her voice much smaller than before, questioning rather than demanding. Her face seemed older, more hollow, no longer the impish face of a child but the face of a starved young woman. There was bitter pain in her green eyes, and the years seemed to stretch out behind them, a long and winding road he did not have time to follow.

"I don't have time to argue with you; I have to solve this…"

Again the child cut him off, the rage rushing back into her eyes. She stood, rocking the boat as she screamed at him. "You just don't get it, do you? There is no time, there is no Labyrinth, there is only a single falling star that lights our existence! You act so smart, like you know everything, but what do you know Toby Williams? What do you know that hasn't been told to you by your professors, by your philosophers, by your great thinkers? You don't know anything!" She looked like a demon come after the blood pumping in his heart; her pale fingers reached out like moonbeams.

Toby closed his eyes against the nightmarish picture. The words of the Goblin King came back to him through the fear. This was not his Labyrinth, these were not his dreams: this was something far more hellish. His voice shook as he leaned backward, away from her coldness.

"I will catch your star."

_—_

He was walking down the narrow pathway, covered in a cold layer of sweat; his limbs shook from fatigue. There were blisters on his hands, and he attempted to cool them by rubbing them against the frost covered stones. His breath trailed ahead of him like white smoke, the lost warmth swallowed by the bitter air. The stars had fallen from the sky.

The child was gone, dancing out of his vision just like the dark lake and the wooden boat—all images conjured by imagination and nothing more, nothing substantial. Her footsteps sounded upon the dark water like the ringing of small bells, her laughter a breath of wind, left half-forgotten in his memory.

A fallen star, a forgotten angel, a phantom. A dream and nothing more. But his mind could not stop to ponder on forgotten things; he moved forward clutching at the walls to guide him through the night dark passage. His blue eyes closed from fatigue, his mind slowly gave out. Time was gone to him—he only had thirteen hours. What was an hour in a place with no light?

He couldn't see very well, his head ached, the pressure behind his eyes was blinding. He fell. Curses flew so easily from his mouth, damning the world, the light, the Goblin King. He was so tired, so shaken—his intellect was nothing here. He was nothing to this place.

The crunch of footsteps, dark scuffed boots upon the cobblestones… He looked up to see a bitter smile.

"You challenged the Goblin King?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.

Her dark hair was tied back loosely, strands left outside of the binding to fly wildly about her face; her green eyes spoke of death and vengeance. In her blood-stained hand she dragged a sword; dark and menacing, it looked far too heavy for her. It scraped against the stone work, screeching with each step she took.

"Yes, I was fool enough to challenge the Goblin King," Toby answered slowly, cringing in memory of his arrogance and irrational pride. He should not have spoken so lightly to a being that could control the flow of time. His eyes widened at the lift of the sword as she stepped forward, looking down on him.

"Perfect." She whispered the word. Her smile grew to match the child's, the fallen star's ruthless smile—a smile which valued nothing and sacrificed everything for the sheer sake of bloodshed and wondered at the helplessness of those trapped by death.

He shuddered at the sight of her.

"Aren't you going to ask my name?" He wanted to stall her, to find the humanity in her, to find something beyond her inhuman eyes, something he could talk to.

"You don't need a name. All you need is your pair of legs—and even then, I could carry you if I had to."

He remembered the eyes of the stars. He swallowed, backed away from her, away from her bloodstained hands, away from the warrior's eyes.

"Well then, who are you?" he asked, stalling, stalling, retreating into the darkness from whence he came. His own cowardice surprised him. He was no brave hero of a tale, like he had imagined. He was no golden warrior; he was not fit to bear the crown.

"I am myself. But enough—you've already wasted too much time." Her grin was meant to be comforting. The image of wolves filled his mind, and he shuddered. He felt death at every corner.

"Where are we going?" he asked, desperation in his gaze; he ached for a sight of humanity in her, to find a touch of mercy in her steely gaze.

"To the center of the Labyrinth, of course."

_—_

"He is too young," said the latest green-eyed stranger.

He looked up from the blood-stained shoulder of the warrior, his eyes widening at the vision floating in front of him. There wavered a pale woman with the eyes that saw through everything. His warrior hoisted him up higher, impatience evident.

"There have been younger. He'll make it; he has to." Her voice was rough against his ears, commanding, prophetic, even, as she carried him closer to victory. She was also staring up at the flowing vision, the woman with the dark hair whose face seemed like the spirit of the absent moon.

"His legs are too weak," the vision said, her words full of sorcery.

"Then I'll carry him. I've carried him far enough already." The warrior set Toby down upon the cold earth, leaving him with her battered sword so that she might bargain with the woman on the wall. She clambered up the stones, her hands gripping at the uneven stones as she carried herself up to where she could see the goddess's cold face.

"You will fail," the goddess said finally, a look of regret passing through her eyes like the fall of an owl's forgotten feather. Hope is a thing with feathers, yes. Toby remembered that even as he looked up at the moonlight through his half-closed eyes.

"We need time, and you are the Labyrinth. You can give us time. I can't watch him fail."

And for the first time Toby saw their faces waver as mirror images of each other, one scarred, dried blood dripping down her face; the other as pristine as forgotten light. Toby blinked and the epiphany was gone. Only the coldness remained.

"Time is what the child with the burned hands makes of it, nothing more."

The warrior shook her head, a bitter smile on her lips. "That's a lie, and we both know it. Time is what the Goblin King makes of it and what the Labyrinth allows. You are the Labyrinth; only you and he can alter this place."

The woman on the wall looked down upon him, the green of her irises burning through his frail skin. He shivered from the cold and from the burns and the fatigue shook his legs. He felt as if he were dying.

Underestimated. He had underestimated the Goblin King—and for what? for a vision of a sister he had never known. A heroine who had sacrificed her life for his, the girl whose face was lost in dim memories. He should have planned. He should have thought, he should have been prepared. But here he was, clinging to the shoulder of a blood-stained warrior as he stared at a moonbeam with feathers in her hair.

(Hope is a thing with feathers.)

"There are still more tasks he must face." Her voice never wavered, and yet he could hear the reflection in her tone. She was the moon, the stars, the earth, and the sky. She was the Labyrinth, a thing of wild magic. He could see the knowledge of the gods flickering like a candle's flame behind the deep emerald of her eyes.

"You are the Labyrinth…" Toby said in realization as he came to see the walls in her hands and the stars in her eyes. She turned to look at him, those emerald eyes piercing. Her hair flowed behind her, a cloud of ill omen.

"Forgive him, please. His intelligence isn't his strong point." The warrior glared at him.

"I am myself, and you are Toby Williams, child of the above, foolish mortal who trespasses in the land of the Goblin King. You must think yourself brave."

Toby could no longer remember how to be insulted. It hardly mattered now. She was right—he would fail. He couldn't walk, he couldn't see straight, and it was so very dark. He settled on speaking the truth.

"I am looking for my sister. He has her, and if I don't make it I'll die."

The earth swayed beneath his feet, the few points of light wavering in the sky, the sorceress in white with the ethereal face smiled gently and walked forward to grasp his hands. She spoke in a tranquil tone to the warrior who still held him above the sea of earth: "You cannot carry him alone."

_—_

They stood before a great wall. The sorceress in white held the light of the world in the palm of her hand. She held it to the stone and whispered into the wind; the gentleness had not left her eyes but the magic surrounded her. She was the warmth of the earth and the feathers of the owl.

The warrior stopped as well, shifting her weight to readjust her heavy load.

"You think he'd take down that damn picture." The warrior scoffed, spitting on the earth at the sight of it. Toby blinked, noticing that the pair of them seemed darkened by the ink on the wall; their faces fell at the sight of it. In fear or regret, Toby could not tell.

"Who is it?" he asked, looking at the side of the warrior's face, seeing her grimace and the steel in her eyes.

The woman with feathers in her hair turned to look at him. "She is his dream."

"Whose dream?" But Toby knew. After all, it was his dream, the Goblin King's dream. It was his nightmare and his vision; it was his labyrinth. But the pair didn't bother to answer. They merely stared at the face upon the wall, the dripping ink that bled into the stonework. Dread in their eyes.

It looked so very familiar, the face on the wall, the green in their eyes. He had seen it before. He reached for the stonework, trying to touch the flesh behind the stone. The warrior swatted his hand away, a harsh tone coloring her voice. "Don't touch it; it's cursed."

"Time is a labyrinth. It twists and turns to leave us behind with only our intuition as a guide. Space is what we make of it; it dwindles as we become less and less imaginative, until only our minds are left to haunt us. The world is a dream and the center is flickering." The light dimmed in the sorceress's hand. Her haunted expression turned towards Toby, still flung over the warrior's red-stained back. Finally she said in a calm voice, "We must leave this place."

_—_

Toby wasn't entirely sure when he decided to ask again for their names. He was too used to the silence—it had been all consuming and the road had been so very long and dark. The words came of their own accord, on a breeze, perhaps, or small ray of light (the light of the northern star that had burned his hands).

They stopped dead in their tracks, Toby caught between their shoulders. They looked at each other as if deliberating on what to say and what to keep silent. The world was  _his_ dream, time is a labyrinth, space is what  _he_  makes of it… So many riddles with answers to sparse to see, and yet there are feathers in her hair.

"If you have to ask then I don't have to tell you," the warrior, said her eyes on the earth.

"Sometimes the things you most wish for are not to be touched," the sorceress said, her eyes on the sky.

"But you know  _my_  name," Toby pointed out, wondering at the unfairness of it all, the lack of chivalry and manners. It certainly was the Goblin King's dream. Who else would have the gall to have none of his citizens introduce themselves properly? Toby felt like laughing because it was so much more difficult than he had anticipated.

"So?" the warrior asked, shifting the braid behind her shoulder, shrugging slightly.

"A name is merely a name."

So frustrating, like reading that damn play. To see the words there dancing on the play—garbage, useless, irrelevant—and yet to know that it was laughing at him. To know that there was some purpose he could not see because he was too stupid, because he was too human, because he wasn't her.

Why? Why was everything so difficult? It was easy enough for her, so what was so different about Toby? He remembered the book's green binding, the smell of dust, and in the darkness of the Labyrinth he swore he could see the purple hues of twilight.

_—_

"Oh, hi Mr. Toby." The child with green eyes sat on the wall, kicking her heels back and forth. The trio stopped to stare at her, staring at the childish expression of contentment that would be easily displaced by boredom, given enough time.

"Hello…" Toby searched for a name and found none but Jareth, so he reached for the next best thing: silence.

"You still looking for that important thing?" she asked, her heels kicking back and forth back and forth.

"Yes, I still am." He smiled. Closer, he was closer at least. Though the world was just as dark. He blinked at that thought, looking at the girl, analyzing. "Hey, where's your star?"

_Where's the star I gave you, you selfish brat? Where's the star I burned my hands for? Where is it? Don't tell me you lost it. Don't tell me I did it for nothing._

"Dropped it." She shrugged as if it were beyond importance. "Still believe in time Mr. Toby?" she asked, her eyes alight with childish mischief. Again Toby had a vision of himself poring over the damn play, and he cursed himself for it.

He took a deep breath, looking to his companions for support. They appeared to be ignoring the child and instead looked straight ahead: the warrior with a stubborn look of impatience; the wise woman with tranquility in her eyes.

"Yes, I still believe in time."

"That's silly. I only believed in time when I was really little. Way littler than you—you're almost an old man. It's silly to believe in things when you're that old. Hey, Mr. Toby, do you believe in space too?"

Toby wondered if it was worth answering, and decided it wasn't. He tried to move forward; the warrior helped him move onward and the sorceress lit the way.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?" she shouted down at him as he made his way down the path.

"To the center of the Labyrinth, of course."

To  _him_  and to  _her_. Twenty years was a long time to keep someone imprisoned. It was time, and Toby wanted out. He wanted out of the Goblin King's head because he recognized that it was watching him. The Labyrinth had been watching him the whole time, watching him stumble and trip along his way. It was Jareth's daydream, after all, and Toby was merely playing along. The sooner he left with her, the better.

"You shouldn't go that way," the child said suddenly, fear entering her eyes.

"Why not?" asked Toby, sick of the backwards answers and the changing paths. Couldn't anything be a straight road? Couldn't anything be simple?

"You don't go that way," she said, hopping down from the wall so that she might bar his path.

"I don't care. If that's the quickest way, I'll go there." Anything just to leave.

"But you'll be traveling through  _his_ nightmares!" Her eyes widened as if to convey the dire situation. Toby no longer cared whether the Goblin King had nightmares or not. What did it matter, so long as Toby was able to leave? He hated this place, he hated the man who owned it, he hated his companions, he hated these visions of madness and darkness.

"Do you think I care anymore?" he asked her, showing her his burned hands, the hands she had burned with her childish selfishness, the boon she had asked from him. Look where it had gotten him. So much for acts of charity.

Tears came to her eyes. She shook her head, pushed at him so he might turn around and start over again. "No, I won't let you! You don't understand, you're just so stupid! You can't go that way, he'llkill you!" she screamed at him, her bare feet stamping against the ground.

"If the world is his dream, then how can I possibly die?"

—

All three of them side by side to carry him. They had the same green eyes, the same dark hair, but the similarities were deeper than that. They all held the same power, the same fearsome gaze. But they all seemed like a fragment of a person, so distant and so false—like a half-finished triptych painted across the walls of the labyrinth.

He wondered again who they could be. And then he saw an echo of a memory in a photograph.

"Does Sarah sound familiar?" he wanted to ask.

But the name slipped away in the Labyrinth's dreams.

_—_

He couldn't remember the nightmares, only the eyes that would stare into him. How those eyes hated him. And there was such anger in him because this was not what he had been looking for. There was a memory of a dance, her in his arms, her eyes on his face. The world fell down around them.

But these eyes spoke of none of that. They were so very cruel and they were eternal, just as eternal as the Goblin King. There were so many memories of her, so many memories that he had never had. Toby couldn't remember what was real and what was  _Jareth's_. It was all so painful, all so dark, and there always was that wrenching feeling in his heart—as if his world were falling apart.

The eyes were everywhere. He ran from them, ran from the memory of them, but they were even in Jareth'sdreams.

Toby was losing himself to the dream, to the monologue that seemed caught in the darkness. He was being carried through by the child as the other two disappeared in the reflection of the eyes.

( _Sometimes the things you most wish for are not to be touched…_ )

Sarah was everywhere, and yet she was intangible; she wasn't real, she was the illusion Jarethhad created. The replacement—because she wasn't there. But of course, it wasn't Toby thinking this. The words were in the air, and everything was so dark.

She would turn to look at him with those star-filled eyes, and he thought in the dark reaching out for her that those eyes were far crueler than he had given them credit for. Better to face the indifference than to see the hope of what might have been.

( _I wish…_ )

There was the image of the ballroom, her dancing in his arms, the world a place of crystal mirrors, the reflection of their image in the eyes of the masks. He could feel her pressed close to him and then the clock, the mirror shattered—and she ran.

Toby shook his head. Not his memories, not his dream. A dream within a dream. The Labyrinth is the dream of a King who lost everything and nothing. She was there again, running towards him and from him. Daughter of sunlight, wandering about paths of whimsy and forgotten dreams of men.

The emerald of her eye caught at the crystal's reflection, causing indiscernible cracks to appear upon its surface, but he couldn't tell; his eyes stuck upon her dirt stained face. It was only later that the dream shattered in its the thirteenth hour. (But where was Toby—these weren't his memories, weren't his thoughts. It wasn't his goddamn dream!)

( _More than anything…_ )

He would have given her the stars, the moon, her own dreams—whatever she desired. It was all hers if only she had asked, but she hadn't. And now he still had to look into her eyes and see the contempt.

The Goblin King sits in a palace made of sands, insubstantial ideals and fancies of the human mind. And then there is her.

He could see her changing, he could see the magic in her eyes as she split off from herself, away from him and away from the choice she never had. He could see her dissolving into the Labyrinth's dark walls, into his own nightmares and dreams. To become substance, to become intangible. She was growing, blinding, passing through him and beyond him.

She was tearing herself apart into smaller and smaller pieces until only her haunting accusing eyes remained, overwhelming and terrifying, blacking out the skyline. And what would he do then? When she was another dream of his Labyrinth, when she was a thought and figment that had consumed everything? What would he do when she devoured his stars?

He'd be left with the shattered glass in the palm of his hands, staring off into the horizon, watching as the landscape began to slide back into the sky and its creating.

There was nothing to be done. Nothing to do but watch. The thirteen hours had come ticking by once again, more slowly this time. For he was god and not god; time obeyed him but it had a will of its own. And Sarah was changing things. The Labyrinth clung to her, and she clung to the Labyrinth.

She was finding her own escape. She had been, all this time, as she rewrote the Labyrinth's passages and marked her hands with its power. He couldn't say he didn't expect it. With her, one must always expect the unexpected—one foot in the wall one in the throne room. No, he could see the cracks upon the surface of her crystal long before he offered it as a gift.

Toby stared down at his hands in the dark, his mind lost amid the darkness and turmoil; he blinked at the images that ran through his mind, knowing that his own memories faded before the strength of the Goblin King's.

A peach, a dream, a pair of green eyes, so long ago and not his own to see. She danced before him, the waxing moon, her face framed in midnight locks only the stars peeking through the raven's curls. Her hand reached out and then moved away, a tender hope drawn in her eye.

And then she looked at him with such hatred and fear in her eyes; there was dirt on her face and a wildness in her eyes that wasn't there before; the clock began running. Her face revealed nothing when she spoke the words, the ones she remembered—and then, finally, the ones she had forgotten.

The world shattered.

Toby cried out in the darkness, "Stay out of my head, you son of a bitch." But the thoughts rambled onward, reaching their conclusion. The furious magic in her eyes, the fractured crystal between his fingertips, her broken dreams in the palm of his hand.

( _Children can only grow from something you love to something you lose…_ )

And then a child's hand in his. He looked down to see the girl with the wild green eyes looking up at him expectantly, her face so grim and so frightening. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, always, always out of reach.

"It's time to go, Mr. Toby."

_—_

"Where is my sister?" asked the boy with the soft blue eyes. His face was streaked with dirt and his hands were scratched and burnt. Beside him stood a child in white, her frayed dress dragging on the ground and her eyes filled with grief. The warrior walked behind, her face turned from the Goblin King; blood turned her face into a mask. The mystic stood by the window, her eyes on the walls, her hands on the castle stone.

The Goblin King didn't answer. He merely held out his arms to the child, who stepped back, her feet filled with fear (and yet there were no burns on her hands).

"Sarah," he whispered to the child, but his eyes were on all of them. All the women, all their faces mirror images of anguish, of hatred, and of yearning. "You came back…" The Goblin King let the sentence drift back into that thirteenth hour that they had never forgotten.

"Where's your mistress?" asked the woman in white, her dark hair obscuring her face. Toby could hear the bitter laughter in her voice. Sarah… He looked at her, the child and then the warrior.

Sarah…

As if summoned, another figure appeared, this one dressed in a grand ballroom gown embroidered with crystal threads, her eyes only for the Goblin King. This one Toby recognized; he recognized the sister he had lost. After all, he had seen her dance with a king…

"Sarah!" Toby cried, reaching out for the woman. She turned to him with a puzzled expression; then she saw the warrior and her confusion became a sneer.

"So this is the new runner. Made his way to the center of the Labyrinth, did he?" She tossed her head and laughed, stepping down closer to inspect the runner. "A bit thin, isn't he? I suppose he didn't make it on his own."

"He's here, he's won," the warrior stated simply.

"You never said he had to walk by himself," the sorceress, curling her hair around her pale fingers as she met the king's gaze defiantly.

The Goblin King said nothing, stars still lost in his eyes as he looked down at each of them in turn. Losing and winning: the words drifted in Toby's brain as he tried to find his way through them, tried to connect them to his situation. He reached out for the King's Sarah, ignoring the warrior and the sorceress behind him as he stepped closer to the beautiful woman in the gown.

"Sarah, thank God I found you. I came back for you, Sarah, I came back." Toby was laughing. He reached out for her hands and held them in his. "I know it's been a long time, but I came back, I came back." There were tears running down his face and the joyous laughter that bubbled forth from his lungs didn't stop, couldn't stop; his soul was on fire with happiness and he only had eyes left for her.

But then he looked at her face.

Her eyes weren't human. They looked down at him in disgust, with something similar to pity but more degrading. Her red lips had distorted themselves into a cruel sneer as she quickly ripped her hands from his and stepped backwards towards the throne.

"Don't touch me," she said quickly.

"…But, Sarah, I…" Toby's words disappeared, and for the first time he saw her—her untouchable beauty and disdain, something not of his own world but of the Labyrinth's.

"Don't presume to know me." She turned then to look at the Goblin King, who still had said nothing. Jareth brooded as he looked into his crystal glass. "Make him leave, Jareth. I don't want him here."

"Shut up!" the warrior yelled, grabbing Toby from behind and drawing him backwards. "He's a runner. Even the King's mistress can't get rid of him so easily."

"You know, coming from a woman who acts like a barbarian I find it hard to believe anything you say." The King's mistress smiled pleasantly at the blood-stained woman; she then turned and walked towards the Goblin King's throne to stand beside him.

"At least I tried." The warrior sneered at the woman standing beside the throne of the Goblin King and Toby's vision of her wavered. No, that couldn't be Sarah, that couldn't be his sister. He refused to let her be his sister.

"Sarah," he started again, his voice catching as his burned hands reach for her. "I came to save you."

His words were lost and he realized, with a sharp pain, that no one was listening to him. In this room of gods he was only a small heap of ashes.

"He won, Goblin King," the warrior said, pulling Toby backwards towards her, claiming possession. "Release us."

The Goblin King was still staring at her, his face devoid of its wolfish smile, and his mismatched eyes empty of any human emotion. All that Toby could make out is a desperate longing, a feeble hope flickering in that small room.

The moment faded.

The Goblin King turned to Toby, his face regaining its former arrogant expression. He smiled sharply. "Well, if it isn't Toby Williams. I never thought you'd make it."

Toby Williams grinned a false grin. "I told you I would."

The Goblin King remained silent, watching Toby with predatory and calculating eyes. The Goblin's grin grew ever wider across his lean inhuman features. Toby felt sweat trickling down from his forehead as he stared at each of the women in turn, none of them right.

"Where is she?" Toby asked coldly, no longer willing to play the game. He only wanted his prize, only wanted to leave this world of nightmares and death.

"You mean you can't find her? Such a pity. And you were getting to be so smart too, almost respectable." The Goblin King sighed dramatically and leaned forward, his gloved hands draping unceremoniously on his bent legs.

"Where did you hide her?" Toby was shouting, his voice raising the stones of the empty, desperate chamber.

"You're awfully cutem," the Goblin King said, his wolfish smile growing, "when you're under the illusion that you know what you're talking about."

"Where is she?" Toby screamed, his voice shaking walls and the floor. The Sarahs looked at him with their green eyes and their pitying, cruelly inhuman expressions. He was so tired of this world of illusions and inhuman creatures who wore human faces as if they were masks.

The Goblin King rose from his throne, a crystal ball resting in his hands as he strode easily towards Toby. "And to think that you thought it would be this easy."

He was smiling, passing by the woman who still stood by the chair and watched him with soft and curious eyes; those eyes were so different from when they had looked at Toby. Everything was so very different from what he imagined.

"Even Sarah, only a stupid little girl at the time—even she knew better than you."

The Goblin King was now standing directly in front of Toby, cocking his head as he surveyed him and shaking his head in disappointment; still he smiled, wearing that bloodthirsty grin.

Toby's words came out stuttering, not allowing him to think clearly. The offended rage was all this place had left him. He only had his rage and its pride to cling to; he had lost even when he won. "I am not… I'm not stupid… I'm not..."

"You challenged an immortal fae who can control time and space upon a whim to a game of wits. Tell me, Toby, what seemed intelligent about that idea?"

"That's not… That's not… I had no choice," Toby said finally, his chin defiant and his eyes determined as he looked into the Goblin King's mismatched eyes. The king offered Toby a quick twitch of the lips before reverting back to his normal expression.

"Oh yes you did. Temember that it was you who called me. You dragged me from my world and demanded that I allow you to take back your sister, who had already sacrificed herself on your behalf. And through all this, you were thinking arrogantly that you had a right to this request." The Goblin King's smile disappeared and his eyes darkened. "Toby Williams, in my world, you have no rights. You are nothing, little more than a distraction, a piece on a game board in which you are irrelevant. There are no underdogs in this place."

Toby looked desperately to the women. His eyes found the child, so selfish and cruel—and yet she had warned him about the nightmares. She was a bright star, utterly indifferent to his existence, only living for her own happiness, a selfish cruel child…

"It's her," Toby said, pointing to the child with her tattered white dress and her bright green eyes. "She's Sarah, isn't she?"

Jareth only looked at him blankly. His eyes emptied of their former arrogance and triumph as if Toby had suddenly exhausted him. It didn't matter, though, because Toby knew he was right. It was the girl. Of course it would be the child, the girl who had talked to him first, the girl who asked for the impossible…

He turned towards her and crouched down to look her in the eye. Her green eyes blinked back at him, empty shells of what they had been. There was no more joy or cruelty, only a window into an empty green soul. He held out his hand to her.

"Sarah, I came back for you…" He smiled but his lips twitched and wavered. He was no longer sure if he could smile,  _really_  smile, anymore.

She said nothing.

Toby took her hand and pulled her into a hug, his eyes closing, and sighed in relief that his journey was finally over. He had won.

"Don't take her for granted, Toby Williams," Jareth said softly, still looking down at him with those pitying, mismatched eyes. "It isn't that simple. She's harder to trap than that. I command all of space and time, and still she has eluded me."

Toby's eyes flew open and his grip on the girl tightened, she squirmed in his grasp.

"What's wrong with her? What did you do to her?" His words were breathless, the relief disappearing and the horror returning once again. How he hated this place.

The Goblin King had turned, though, and was walking towards the window. His eyes watched the yellow sky of the Labyrinth. His shoulders bent like an old and withered man's, like Hamlet contemplating his death.

"Take her," he said. "Take all of them, take them and get out. Get out."

Toby realized, then, looking into Sarah’s ancient wild eyes, that perhaps she was too sharp for either of them to touch.

And then they were gone, out of the Labyrinth, and Aboveground once more.


	3. Chapter 3

"Yes, this is…"

"Oh yes, hello, this is…"

"This is my…"

"This girl, she's my…"

"She's…"

There were so many failed words and phrases. She stood there, a shadow on the stairs, so sharp, so quiet, so very different. She looked like the Goblin King; she had that edge to her that seemed so ragged against his softly painted world. She didn't belong here, in Boston, but he tried to pretend that he didn't really know that.

She said her name was Sarah but that was all she knew. She wore no shoes because she had forgotten what they felt like; she said they were cages. She had forgotten how to read. He wasn't sure she needed those words, anymore; she had found older ones. Her hair was long and tangled, so he pulled it back in a loose braid for her. She was like a child with ancient eyes—she had forgotten everything, but she had filled the absent spaces with terrible things he would never understand.

He told her the story backwards and forwards, all through the Labyrinth, but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

She just sat an apple in her hand, in fragments, her green eyes watching the light dancing off his skin. She didn't even know his name.

How was he to explain her presence from nowhere, out of nothingness with eyes like that? They were vague, dull, brilliant eyes that saw past everything yet revealed almost nothing of their magic. She was nothing real, nothing tangible. She was the air and the earth.

She was not his sister.

He didn't have a sister.

His sister was dead.

It didn't matter, though, because he had won (even if he had won a shell of a girl filled with something darker) and that was what really mattered. Winning, beating the King at his own game—no matter the price.

_—_

She was standing in the middle of the sidewalk again. She had become a somewhat familiar sight, a barefoot young woman who stared with wide green eyes at the flashing lights and the steady stable buildings, almost like a girl who was only beginning to realize she was terribly lost.

Toby walked up behind her with the groceries in his hand, hoping she wouldn't walk into the street, "Sarah, what are you looking at?"

The best method of dealing with her was direct talking, direct thoughts; she responded to bluntness well. She blinked at him and started, looking him over for a threat, before deciding he was harmless. He tried not to think about that.

"Sarah?" he asked again.

She looked away and brushed her dark hair behind her ear. "Nothing," she said.

Somehow, she knew it wasn't a real question. Toby didn't really care what she was staring at. The fae didn't waste words, and for the first few weeks, those first dreadful weeks, she hadn't known that it was possible to waste words. She hated it when he asked or said things he didn't mean. Worthless words, wasted words—you shouldn't say things you don't mean. Those words aren't real.

She had been different, then. She was getting better, he told himself. She was more fae than human, but not anymore. He had taken her to his parents' house because he thought they would have been pleased. But she hadn't aged. She suffocated in those walls and they asked so many questions she didn't know how to answer. She stayed there, but Toby visited; Toby was best with Sarah.

He took her hand and began to lead her toward the house where they would have a family dinner and talk about the things that hadn't happened to them and the things they didn't care about. She hated those dinners. So many wasted words.

She followed him dutifully, having learned by now that it is always better to follow and to observe than try to escape. Escape was painful and disappointing. It would come in time, she knew. Soon their small human minds would not be able to contain the depth and richness of the words she whispered at night. (They were words she meant, and this belligerent human family would never understand that.)

As they walked past the shops and streets and people, Toby realized he, Too, was disappointed. The princess, he had thought, was not only supposed to be beautiful but sane as well. People took for granted her sanity after being trapped for eighteen years in a tower, one hundred in a dream, or for a decade in an empty castle with only her thoughts.

It wasn't her fault. (Yet, Toby couldn't help but feel bitter; she could have tried a little harder.)

He had traveled far across the land, through darkness, only to find that his princess had gone insane. There was, he suspected, a certain irony, though he was too tired to label it.

He looked over his shoulder as they approached the house and the voices of his parents—so happy, so shocked, and saw the forest darken in her eyes until he could see the wolf's eyes (blue and green) staring back.

He tried not to think about it.

_—_

It couldn't last. Even Toby knew it couldn't last. He was teetering on the knife's edge and he was going to fall. Though she looked human, though she had once been human, she had been infected by the Labyrinth. She didn't belong with Toby.

The room was a disaster. Scorch marks on the walls, plants growing from the ceiling and the floor. She was sitting amid torn pages, her eyes closed and legs crossed. Nothing in her was human, nothing related to him. She was not what he expected (she wasn't what he bargained for).

He remembered he had tried to teach her to remember how to read. It had been working. He thought it had been coming back to her. She even smiled…

"…Sarah?"

She kept staring at the floor where flowers were beginning to bloom, rushing through their short lives as if they only had that single moment to live. It wasn't human.

He moved closer to her minding the plants growing beneath his feet. The room was becoming a forest like the ones she had left; he could make out the beginning of fireflies in the corner of his eye while the flowers bloomed and withered in only a moment.

"Sarah?" he asked more strongly, ignoring the feeling that he had used the wrong word again. It shouldn't make a difference how he asked, yet it always did.

He stepped on the broken back of a book whose spine he hadn't noticed before. He stopped walking as his eyes widened and he saw the torn fluttering pages around him, like silver birds making their way skyward. He stooped down and picked up the cover, pages torn out and dangling.

He hadn't thought there'd be so many memories. He hadn't even enjoyed it, not like he thought he would, and yet… There was something about seeing a book that way, an empty destroyed thing, flung like a carcass at his feet. There was no blood and yet…

He felt as if something had died.

The book fell from his hand. His fingers must have been shaking.

He looked away from the fragmented pages to see her staring at him from amid the rustling papers.

He felt as if the world had fallen away and he was in some other world, Sarah's world, where all was silent and time simply stopped. Her eyes held him there, in that place, in that time, and all he could do was watch. No words. No words in this place.

She smiled, then, the Goblin King's smile, and time returned the book fallen to the floor, where it would remain. He took a step back. She was unmoved still smiling. Toby backed through the doorway and closed the barrier between them.

That was the first time, the first true time, that he knew he had failed.

_—_

Toby always knew the Goblin King would come back. He had been expecting him for weeks. The Goblin King was late, and he probably knew it. Judging from the expression on his face, he still didn't care a bit what Toby thought.

Toby didn't see him. He was staring out the window at the fall leaves dangling precariously from the trees outside. It was almost twilight, that time when all distinctions of reality seemed to fade, and for a moment he was back in the Labyrinth. Sarah would be staring out the window from her room, her room which changed day to day. (He no longer tried to explain it or rationalize it).

Toby didn't see him but he didn't need to. He could feel that pricking, inhuman stare at his back.

"You're late," Toby said without turning around.

"A wizard is never late, nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to."

Toby almost smiled, almost laughed, but it didn't really seem appropriate.

"She's worse than you know," Toby added, watching his own reflection in the blinding glass.

Here the Goblin King paused, as if sensing the gravity of the statement, but he continued regardless. "Why on earth did you think I let you take her, if I didn't know that already?"

Toby turned then to see the Goblin King sitting at his kitchen table. His hands were folded under his chin and his eyes glinted in the sunset. He was not smiling but looking more solemn than Toby had seen. Toby found he didn't care.

"But she's not  _worse_. Do you understand, yet?"

Toby didn't answer the question, but merely stared with indifference at the desperate king. How much less terrifying he seemed now, after the story had ended.

"It was the Labyrinth, you see," Jareth explained with a wave of one hand. "It transformed her, split her in pieces, mixed human magic and fae magic… and now…"

"Now she's madder and more powerful than you can ever hope to be," Toby finished for him with dead eyes.

The Goblin King said nothing.

"It's true," Toby said with a shrug. "She can't stay here much longer. You were right; she doesn't belong here."

The Goblin King frowned and placed his hands on the table, looking at Toby with a cock of his head before smiling and saying, "Blunt and irritating doesn't suit you."

Toby shrugged again, "You should talk to her. You're closer to her than I am. She should be upstairs, or on the roof."

"So much effort for the princess, and you give up on her now?"

"I'm realistic."

The wolf's smile returned.

"Well then, perhaps I shall. We'll talk soon, Toby."

The boy would never see the words he could not speak, but he did know one thing: the Goblin King was sad and powerless, and did not have the strength to take her back. She was beyond both of them. She could touch the stars without burning.

_—_

Sarah came down from her tower, her hair loose and her feet barefoot. Flowers bloomed and withering beneath her as she stepped. She didn't smile; her face was nothingness, it contained no human expression. He had expected that.

He was reading in his chair but his mind was at the top of the stair with her.

She looked at him when she reached the bottom step. A wind wound its way through the house, and her eyes said nothing.

He didn't say anything for her.

(He didn't know when he had begun to despise her.)

"You sent him," she said finally. She hardly spoke; it was strange to hear her voice.

"No," Toby said and shook his head. "He went up all by himself. Jareth is a big boy, Sarah, he can do as he pleases."

Her eyes narrowed and for the first time, Toby thought, she looked as if she was angry with him. It was nice to know the feeling was mutual.

"You still don't understand," she said and again he felt as if the room had stopped moving, that he had been taken to that other world in which she lived. She smiled. "You think you're so wise now that the story's over and the play is finished. You've written me away already, written me off—I'm the insane princess you never bargained for."

Toby felt as if someone had struck a hammer upon his heart.

"Would you like to know how your play ends, Mr. Toby Williams? There is a story, and its name is Labyrinth. However, it is a story that never ends; it expands within itself and when it finds words already written, it takes them into its mouth and eats them whole. This is the end—but what end? The end that both eats and creates through a word, or with a star. You've brought the story back to life, Toby, you've brought me back—just never how you imagined. And now I'm going to devour the Goblin King. And once I've done that, I'll gobble you whole."

Toby picked up his book again and began to read. By the time he looked up again she was gone.

_—_

Toby knew what the universe dreamed.

The universe dreamed of his sister, or what once was his sister, or what never was his sister. Some days, it was hard to tell. It dressed her in bright fabric composed of stars and lakes and rivers, crowned her head with the aurora borealis. And in return she smiled back—a small thing—and reached a hand to pluck a star from the heavens as if it were a grape, or perhaps an apple. (She needed no serpent to offer her the Fruit of Knowledge.)

Slowly but surely, thought and dream conformed to her and became her iron throne: the Labyrinth, she thought she might call it. She idly began to twist it to whatever shape suited her caprice. And then she gobbled the universe whole, one star at a time. All the while, it dreamed of her.

He saw this vision, the woman with the starlit wine and the twisting throne, and he wondered what emotion he was supposed to express. A tale would demand horror or perhaps a touch of pity, but this was not a tale; it was real and it was a dream. And so he felt that he should feel something different.

The Goblin King knew this dream and didn't know this dream. He saw it in a dance, in a word whispered in his ear, as the world fell down. He saw her and saw something, but he didn't see her. She had grown beyond vision.

He wonders if she is still in her various pieces, scattered in the stonework of the Labyrinth. It's unlikely: the universe only dreams of one of them. She's too big to leave room for more.

How many stars are left in that sky?

How many runners have met a little girl in a boat on a lake?

This was the universe's dream, though, not his, and so it doesn't concern him as much as he tells himself that it should.

Toby dreamed, sometimes.

He dreamed that he was reading a book and thinking that he never had a sister and never found a Labyrinth.

He turned the page, and didn't think of death.


End file.
